


I Wondered (I Never Found an Answer)

by thebiwholived



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Declarations Of Love, I wrote this as personal therapy, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, can you fucking believe, dear writers if you do us dirty you're gonna catch these mf hands, no betas we die like Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27519511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebiwholived/pseuds/thebiwholived
Summary: Immediately follows S15E18 Despair. Spoilers, obviously.Cas is gone, and he took a bit (a lot) of Dean with him.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 26
Kudos: 230





	I Wondered (I Never Found an Answer)

When Sam finally pushes open the door of Room 7B, he’s far past panicking. He’s experienced enough long, painful drives in his time that they’ve become almost a sort of routine of his and Dean’s complicated, fucked-up lives. But the drive back to the bunker had felt like the longest one yet. An eternity of relentlessly trying Dean’s cell, his hand white-knuckled on the steering wheel, Jack sitting silent and stiff beside him in the passenger’s seat, miles of abandoned cars and bikes and buildings blurring together outside the window.

Eileen was gone. He had just watched helplessly as the rest of their friends went up in smoke before his eyes, and Dean _couldn’t_ be –

_He and Cas were okay. They had to be._

_‘They are, they are, they are’_ plays in a desperate loop inside Sam’s head as he and Jack hurry through the hallways of the bunker, calling out for what’s hopefully left of their family. What’s hopefully left of mankind.

There’s a sweet, stabbing, wonderful feeling of enormous relief when Sam enters the room and there’s Dean and he’s _sitting up, breathing, **alive**_ and then the world comes thundering down around him again in the space of the next second as he gets a good look at his big brother.

Dean is alone in the room, no sign of Cas. His hair is a mess, his eyes red-rimmed, sitting with the unnatural stillness of someone who hasn’t moved a muscle in hours – he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even look up, as Sam bursts through the doorway. Sam heads straight for him even as his eyes automatically scan the room for waiting threats, and he falls to a knee beside his brother’s boots, his heart racing.

“Dean, what happened?” he demands, and he’s relieved to see a flicker of life in Dean’s eyes at the sound of his name.

Dean’s head moves against the wall slightly. His fingers curl where they rest against his jeans. Sam’s knee nudges Dean’s phone on the floor between them, and Sam picks it up, the screen automatically lighting up. _Missed calls (26)_ , _Sam._

“Sorry I didn’t answer, Sammy.”

Sam looks back at Dean, another massive surge of worry driving through him both at the _‘Sammy’_ and at the lifeless tone of Dean’s voice.

“Dean, _what happened?”_ Sam grips Dean’s shoulder, the fabric of his jacket bunching in his fingers, and he notices for the first time the bloody handprint on Dean’s other arm.

“I know I should have answered….”

Dean’s voice breaks just the tiniest fraction on the last word, and Sam swallows hard. Panic shredding up his insides, he pockets the phone and grasps Dean under the elbow, sliding his other hand down between Dean’s back and the brick wall.

“Come on, you can’t stay here, let’s get you up….”

_They have to keep moving, they have to keep going, they were going to be fine, everything was going to be **fine.**_

Curling his arm around Dean’s ribs, Sam pulls. Dean doesn’t so much cooperate as he simply allows Sam to haul him heavily to his feet. Dean staggers a little, his eyes still unfocused, but Sam holds onto him tightly and together they shuffle out of the room. Across the sigils on the floor, past the fresh one dripping down the back of the door, out of the room where Sam is dreadfully, excruciatingly sure something horrific has happened.

“Sam?” Jack calls from deeper in the bunker, and a second later he rounds the corner, stopping short in the middle of the corridor when he spots them. “Dean!” The kid looks terrified, and he hurries after them, his brow furrowing, as Sam leads the way to the kitchen.

“I’ve got you,” Sam tells Dean, and Dean flinches.

Sam lowers Dean as gently as he can onto a stool. It comforts him very slightly that Dean helps a little this time. Jack hovers, worried and uncertain, before settling a few seats away, staring almost forlornly at the side of Dean’s head. If Sam had any space left in his brain for it, he would lament again for the umpteenth time that Dean and Jack’s relationship has always been so…complicated. Distant. He knows that most of the time, Jack craves to offer Dean comfort but knows Dean won’t accept it.

Which is really unfortunate, honestly, because Dean could always use more of that.

 _Idjit,_ echoes a familiar voice in Sam’s head, and his throat tightens. The image of not-even-close-to-their-Bobby-but-still-Bobby dissolving into nothing replays in his head.

“Dean,” Sam says urgently. He finally releases his brother’s shoulder and sinks down onto the stool next to him. “Where’s Cas?”

Cas’s name seems to act like an electric shock to Dean’s system, and his whole body jerks. His fingernails scrape the table and his eyes spark back to life. His lips part slightly as his gaze flicks to Sam, and then around the room. Trying and failing to take in his surroundings, his breathing speeding up.

Sam has never seen his brother in this state, and it’s more than alarming.

He’s seen Dean down. He’s seen him broken, crying, dead, dying, terrified, devastated, so angry he could kill and so depressed he wanted to give up. Jesus, both he and Sam have been through the goddamn wringer over the years.

But this is something else, this is _lost._

“Cas,” Dean says like a prayer, and his breath hitches violently on the word.

This is _shattered._

The kind of shattered you can’t glue back together.

“Dean, _where’s Cas?”_ He reaches out to take hold of Dean’s arm. Jack is staring, wide-eyed and frozen. Sam is sure they are hopelessly, pointlessly wishing the same thing.

“He…Jesus, Sam, he….”

Dean’s breathing stutters again as he stares down at his own hands. His fingers open and close like they’re trying to hang onto something. He takes another gulp of air and closes his eyes. They scrunch together tightly, his face screwing up as he struggles to breathe. Sam’s grip tightens urgently on his brother’s arm, trying in vain to hold the pieces together.

Even as he falls apart, Sam can see Dean fight to…be Dean, against all reason. To stop, to be fine, to control himself enough to convince everyone else there was nothing to worry about. _Nothing to see here._ Dean’s eyes open, focusing on nothing, and his jaw sets, but Sam already knows it’s a lost battle.

Dean inhales sharply, and again, and again until it’s far too fast, and his face is going white.

“Hey, c’mon, man, breathe... _breathe, Dean.”_

Dean moves as if to get up, but his limbs are uncertain even of that, and all he does is shift and turn a bit, one hand gripping the edge of the table, the other shaking at his knee. His chest heaves with deeper breaths like he is trying to stop, but they’re just as fast and Sam knows instinctively that he is about to pass out.

Pressing his hand firmly to Dean’s back, Sam forces him to bend, to tuck his head down, boosting the blood flow to his brain and heart. Not knowing what else to do, how else to _just help his big brother not be in pain,_ he places a hand on Dean’s hair, slowly begins to rub his back with the other, bowing his head almost as low as Dean’s.

And if Sam didn’t know better, he’d start praying. Like he used to when he was a kid. His fingers curl in Dean’s hair, those memories never seeming so _fucking bitter_ as they do now.

Sam supposes he’s helped after all, when Dean’s breathing slows, or maybe it’s just selfish, wishful thinking, but either way Dean rises halfway, enough to brace his elbows on his knees and bury his hands in his hair.

Sam’s own hands fall away.

There’s silence in the kitchen for a moment, apart from Dean’s still-too-fast-too-loud breathing.

“He’s gone….”

Dean says it so quietly, Sam debates for a millisecond whether he wants to be coward enough to pretend he hasn’t heard it. His mouth twitches and he glances at Jack. There are already tears running down the Nephilim’s face, and Sam wishes he could still feel enough to go over and comfort him.

“He’s gone….” Dean whispers again, and Sam can’t tell whether he’s actually trying to tell them what happened, or if his pain is just so intense he’s being forced to voice it.

“How?” Sam rasps.

Dean’s head moves almost imperceptibly in his hands. “Billie.” His hands strain, as if he’s attempting to crush the memory out of his brain. “The Empty….”

Jack shifts mutely in his seat. He looks almost guilty through his tears, but Sam can’t bring himself to puzzle that out at the moment.

He’s so goddamn tired.

All that matters is that everyone is gone, and Chuck is winning. All that matters is that Castiel is dead. And that Dean is too far gone to explain right now.

They’ll figure it out later, like they always do. _If there is a ‘later,’_ Sam thinks. For the moment, all he can do is sit in pain and silence as his brother falls to pieces.

As their world, the last world left, falls apart.

* * *

After the Empty takes Cas, everything is a blur.

It’s like Dean can’t see straight anymore. He knows his eyes are working, he thinks his brain is working, but it feels like he’s stuck in a dream. A warped, blank, alternate reality. Nothing looks right, nothing sounds right, nothing _smells_ right. His chest is a big black void _(knock knock, nobody home)_ and he seriously wonders if it’s possible he _didn’t_ survive Death like Cas meant him to. Maybe the Empty sucked Dean’s soul in with everything else, an accidental side effect.

The thought of his soul stuck with Cas forever, wherever he is, would be a nice one if only Dean could still feel nice things.

It’s been two days since Sam found him on the floor in 7B. Two days of poring over Men of Letters texts like it’s going to help. Like they’re miraculously going to find some way to stop Chuck, sitting here in an old bunker, the emptiness and silence of the outside world pressing in on them through its walls. Like they’re not the only three people left in the universe. No hunters, no Billie, no Cas….

No one coming to help.

“You should eat something.” Sam places a sandwich down in front of him as he joins Dean again at the table where they’re doing their pointless God-killing research. “You haven’t. At all.”

Dean grunts and nudges the plate away. His stomach hasn’t complained, so he doesn’t see why he should either. Automatically, he reaches for the bottle of whiskey at the center of the table, but his hand falls back a second later. Habit, he realizes, not a real desire, and he goes back to his book, massaging the bridge of his nose.

“Dean, you can’t do this. You won’t eat, you won’t sleep – ”

“Sam – ”

“You think that’s going to help?”

 _Nothing’s gonna fucking_ help, _Sammy. Not this time._

“It’s just _us,_ Dean. That’s it, you me and Jack. We can’t give up. Cas wouldn’t – ”

“Stop, Sam,” Dean says, and it’s a little too loud. He’s surprised to find there’s a flicker of anger left in him after all. “Okay? Just stop.”

Sam asked again, several hours after finding Dean, what happened in the bunker while he and Jack had been with the rest of the hunters. And still Dean had not been able to tell him. Still can’t. Dean can’t wrap his mind around it, around Cas’s words, his face…his brain is stuck in a circle, going around and around, over and over.

_I’ve got you._

_The one thing I want._

_You changed me._

_I love you._

_I’ve got you._

How can he explain to Sam? How can he possibly explain why the Empty was there at all, without revealing the rest of it? Without revealing Cas’s confession of what made him most happy?

_They could have been happy._

The thought comes out of nowhere, filling Dean up from the inside out like a bucket of ice, and it’s like he can’t breathe again. He hasn’t been able to think the words, to admit, even to himself, what he should have said. What he wishes he would have said, before it was too late. It doesn’t feel real, that they could’ve…that he and _Cas…._

_They could have had **time.**_

Dean closes his eyes, resting his head in the palm of his hand. He can’t look at Sam for this.

“Dean – ”

“He said he loved me.”

There’s a beat of silence, then a rustle, and in his mind’s eye Dean can see Sam suddenly sitting up straight, elbows on the arms of his chair in that sitting-in-a-college-class-ready-to-learn Sam way of his, focusing every ounce of his energy now on the conversation.

“What?”

Dean’s just glad Jack’s holed up in his room.

“Cas said – he said…a lot of things – ” Everything in Dean seizes up against admitting any of this, even to Sam. A voice in the back of his mind that sounds a lot like John Winchester’s urges him to keep his mouth shut.

“Billie was already dying,” he starts over. “She wanted to get rid of me before it was lights out, so she followed us to the bunker. I didn’t know what to do. Cas and I, we – he got me behind a door and put up the warding. But we both knew it wasn’t strong enough to hold her off….”

Dean pauses. It feels like an iron vice is gripping his intestines as, for the first time, he lets himself remember. And yup, he’s pretty damn sure he’s still got his soul, because it’s hurting like absolute fucking hell now – and Dean would know.

Sam doesn’t say a word.

“He told me he made a deal with the Empty, to – to save Jack, and he – ” Jesus Christ. “It would only come back for him when he was…’truly happy,’ I guess.”

Dean stops again, fingers biting into his leg under the table to give himself something else to focus on.

“It was the only thing Billie was afraid of, the only thing that might stop her, and he – he told me. He just...said he loved me, and that made him _happy?”_ He knows it comes out sounding like a question, but even now he doesn’t know if he is capable of really believing it.

He laughs, though it doesn’t sound like a laugh at all.

“The stupid son-of-a- _bitch,_ he just…and then the Empty came, and Billie was gone, and Cas – he just _smiled_ at me, Sammy. He fucking _smiled_ ….”

 _“Shit,_ Dean.” Sam breathes, but Dean still can’t bring himself to look at him.

His chest doesn’t feel like a big black void anymore, it’s the opposite, too much rushing in at once, completely and unendurably overwhelming, and for once he doesn’t want to do this alone. He wants someone, even if it’s his baby brother, to tell him it’s okay, that what he felt – what he _feels_ (and God, is he fucking _feeling)_ – for Cas is okay.

That he’s not stupid and pathetic _(but of course he is, isn’t he, look what happened)_ for falling in love with a crazy, beautiful, infuriating, self-sacrificing _angel._

Dean finally looks up.

Sam’s face is…wrecked. His eyes don’t leave Dean’s. “I’m…so sorry, man. I’m _so_ sorry. I don’t even….” He swallows. Runs one of his huge hands through his hair. “Did you…did you tell him – ?”

“No,” Dean croaks, and he kind of does want that bottle of whiskey now.

There’s a flash in Sam’s eyes that Dean can only describe as heartbreak, and it’s enough to tell him that Sam does think it’s okay. That Sam doesn’t think it’s insane or weird or wrong that his brother fell in love with an angel, and that an angel fell in love with him, too.

Dean doesn’t know how they’re going to do this. He doesn’t know how they can beat _God,_ and bring everybody back, and save the world _(and maybe find Cas, comes an unacknowledged little thought)._

But for the first time in days, it doesn’t feel pointless to try.


End file.
